Compared to my Sister's old Civic, your engine is clean. Looks like a
weeping valve cover gaskets to me. From what I have seen, this is
standard operation proceedure for older Hondas. Are you actually
losing enough oil between changes to require oil to be added? If the
oily engine bothers you, have someone repalce the valve cover gasket.
This is not a difficult operation. On the other hand, if you are not
losing much oil, and the minor oil film doesn't bother you, close the
hood and drive. My sister wouldn't spend a dime to fix her leaks and
the engine was running fine at 147,000 miles. The rest of the car was
a POS, but the engine ran fine...

Ed
"mavigozler" <mavigozler@turkiye.gov> wrote in message
news:Xns9C3C410E526FAmavi@207.115.33.102...
>
> I have some photos of a 2000 Honda Civic engine with 140,000
> kilometers
> (87,500 miles). 98% of them local, urban miles. Fuel has always
> been a
> 95 octane. Engine oil has always been synthetic (in this part of
> the
> planet) but changed every 10,000 km (6000-7000 miles) anyway because
> all
> the driving is local and in high stress traffic.
>
> Photos: http://drop.io/OilyHondaEngine
> [note that image size is 2048x1536 pixels, and the website preview
> is
> too small to see detail; click download to see orig rez]
>
> I noticed too much oil around the engine surface recently, a burning
> smell
> coming from the front. Don't notice any smoky exhaust at all,
> although
> the noise from the exhaust isn't as quiet as it used to be (although
> not
> at all excessively noisy).
>
> Photos (some taken with flash, others no flash) show heavy oil
> buildup
> (with lots of dirt) in bottom/crankcase part. The borderline of oil
> on
> the valve at the top seems to show even (horizontal) line a few
> centimeters above the main engine block. No real noticeable loss of
> engine power (compression?) problems.
>
> Putting it all together, potential problems suggest:
>
> * worn-and-torn gasket or seal between valve cover and main engine
> block:
> I consider this most likely problem, since the horizontal line of
> oil
> suggests this, and the leak of oil would eventually cover the whole
> engine
> block
>
> * worn piston rings: wholly unlikely, since wouldn't that cause a
> heavy
> smoky exhaust, and why would oil leak out of engine
>
> * some other seal or gasket problem? in addition to the problem I
> indicate above? I will probably only be able to learn this after
> having
> one part replaced and then somehow cleaning the entire engine block
> free
> of dirt and oil...how to do this easily?
>